Marsha's Minority Math

Had Enough Yet?

Marsha’s Minority Math: Had Enough Yet?

The Republican tent at the annual Bellevue Picnic yesterday was plastered with a simple slogan: “Had Enough Yet?”

Enough of what?

Despite the mythology that Tennessee is some monolithic red state, the numbers tell a different story. Only about a third of Tennesseans identify as Republican. Democrats make up 32.2% of the electorate. Independents make up 24.5%. Together, that is 56.7% of Tennessee voters. Republicans account for 33.6%, with another 9.7% identifying as something else.

And yet the MAGA wing of the Republican Party controls 82% of the Tennessee Senate, 76% of the Tennessee House, and, if the new congressional map survives court challenges, then every single congressional seat will be drawn to elect Republicans.

If Republicans feel like they’ve “had enough,” maybe what they’ve had enough of is democracy.

Marsha Blackburn has repeatedly argued that Tennessee should be represented exclusively by conservatives because Congress should reflect “our values.” That argument rests on the premise that if you erase everyone who disagrees with you, you can claim unanimous support, which may be politically advantageous, but it’s not democracy.

It is authoritarianism.

There’s nothing conservative about using government power to eliminate dissent, nor redrawing maps to silence communities of color. And there’s nothing conservative about demanding one-party rule. And there is certainly nothing conservative about subordinating an entire state to the whims of a single man.

On April 29, the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in Louisiana v. Callais, sharply narrowing the ability of voters to challenge racially discriminatory maps under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Justice Kagan warned in dissent that the ruling would gut one of the nation’s most important civil-rights protections.

Tennessee wasted no time proving her right.

Donald Trump demanded that Tennessee redraw our map to eliminate our only Democratic congressional district, centered in Memphis, one of our country’s largest majority-Black cities and one of the most historically significant centers of Black culture and civil-rights activism in America.

Governor Lee called a special session the very next day.

At the start of the special session, several Republicans privately admitted that they didn’t want to be there and didn’t support dismantling Memphis’s district.

Then Indiana’s Republican primary results arrived.

The Magasphere spent ~$22M punishing Republican lawmakers who resisted Trump’s redistricting agenda. That was the only reminder anyone needed that voting their conscience risked their seat.

I don’t think anyone would deny that the session was performative. The redistricting bill’s sponsor admitted as much when he said that the goal was to secure Republican dominance in Congress. It’s hard to believe we’re at a point where that is a defensible stance.

And it’s really hard to believe that the party wielding overwhelming power in this state so regularly and effectively casts itself as the aggrieved party. As they ruthlessly strip representation from hundreds of thousands of voters, they claim they are the victims and accuse us of divisiveness.

That’s not accidental. It’s central to authoritarian politics. If you can convince your supporters they’re under siege, they’ll tolerate almost any abuse of power as long as it’s done by their team.

Nashville has lived this reality for five years. When Republicans dismantled our congressional district in 2021, our community lost meaningful representation in Washington. Republican representatives largely ignored Nashvillians, forcing the Davidson County legislative caucus to step in and help residents navigate problems that should have been handled by federal offices.

Now they are doing the same thing to Memphis. Nobody is even pretending that the goal is better representation. It’s to ensure certain communities are never represented at all. And in the spirit of the famous and controversial Martin Niemöller poem, “First They Came,” what happens to Memphis (and already happened to Nashville) will happen to all of us if we don’t stop it.

The Voting Rights Act wasn’t a gift from woke politicians. It was earned through decades of organizing, sacrifice, and bloodshed. Americans were beaten, jailed, and murdered to secure the right to vote. The effort to weaken those protections is not abstract. It’s an attack on one of the most sacred achievements of the civil-rights movement. And the fact that the controlling party in Tennessee counters that race is irrelevant is offensive and dismissive.

The so-called SAVE Act threatens to create new barriers for millions of eligible voters, particularly women whose legal names no longer match their birth certificates. Voting rights are the beginning of the endgame: permanent control. Obsolescence of representation.

During the special session, my friend and colleague Charlane Oliver stood on her desk in the Tennessee Senate chamber. Some have called it a performance. I stood beside her, and I can tell you that it was not. It was a mother fighting for her children’s future. It was a legislator willing to risk her own standing to defend democracy and human rights, and it was an act of moral courage.

People on the right have alleged that the protestors up at the Capitol were paid actors. They were not. They were Tennesseans who understood what’s at stake. Every single one of them showed us what courage and civic engagement look like. They were doing their job- the job of being an American citizen!

The Democratic caucus and our staff worked tirelessly, strategically, and with extraordinary discipline to defend truly representative government, and I could not be prouder of them.

We’re often mocked as “snowflakes” because we believe every person has inherent worth. So be it.

Snowflakes, when they come together, become a blizzard.

And history shows us that no amount of gerrymandering can hold back a determined majority forever. Not as long as they VOTE!